A Coffee Shop in Los Angeles

But the beautiful girl across the table connects with you with in glances, headphones holding back the hair that wants to fall on her shoulders and sweater. Her accent comes off clean. She holds her coffee delicately, warming her hands on the lid. You bet she feels like rainfall. And you think, more than once, about barricading yourself in the downpours of her waterfall smile.

Her name, written with the barista’s hand, blurs on the coffee cup: Valari.

A peculiar spelling, most fitting for the way this girl separates herself from the crowd. You know everyone here will melt when she goes; because she’s like breath spots on a morning window: always slipping into translucency; afraid of attachment to the world.

Your coffee goes cold on this Friday afternoon. You allow yourself a tiny, inaudible laugh, thinking of the ways your coffee girl makes you forget the problems in life. That atrocious interview you had earlier this morning becomes a trifle. Relationships seem less like shrapnel and more like possibility. And if the stars would shoot right now, you know what you would wish for…

But pretty girls like this are for the imagination. Only dream scenarios end with you walking away with her. She’s an attraction people might pay to see, so they could gather around the fragrance she walls herself in, hoping against all odds that her unapproachable nature will succumb to the introduction they script in their heads.

If you told her you were writing about her, the strangeness of your statement might encourage her departure, so you listen to music, and read your book, careful to savor those stares she gives you so you can pull them up when your writing requires a beautiful muse.

And you give her one last look before leaving, tinkering with things you don’t need by the door so that she might look up from the book that has plundered her attention and realize that a something special sticker has tagged itself to your shirt tails.

I am incredibly honored that you nominated me! I am sorry for the delay in my response, but I have been away traveling and have not had the opportunity to check my emails. However, know that I am deeply touched by the fact that you enjoy my writing enough to give me the nomination. I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day! Thanks again!